The things that shape how I experience the city

This is my Istanbul: Koc Museum March 30, 2010

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an industrial scion in Turkey in possession of a good fortune must open a museum. That’s probably what Austen would have written had she lived in early 21st century Istanbul, rather than early 19th century Britain. It seems like almost every billionaire in town (there are 34, according to Forbes) establishes a university and a museum. Most of these are not (yet) part of my Istanbul, mostly because I’ve not been to them. But there’s one billionaire-founded museum I could go back to time and again: the Rahmi M. Koc Museum.
While many of those museums tend to be art museums, which can be pretty cool, the Koc Museum is unabashedly not: it’s dedicated to “the history of Transport, Industry, and Communications.” Basically, Rahmi M. Koc was born into the family behind Koc Holding. He absolutely loved cars and anything mechanical as a child, and was able to pick up quite a few mechanical wonders. Later in life, realizing that he had all this cool stuff and was sitting fairly pretty given that Koc Holding was the largest conglomerate in the country, he decided to establish a museum to display the odds and ends he’d collected over the years. It opened in 1994.
When you walk in the front gates of the museum, the first thing you notice is everything in the parking lot. I’m not talking tour busses – I’m talking airplanes and military vehicles, with an old London double-decker bus in the middle. They’re all kind of scattered about, and you can walk up to/in several of them, including a very old passenger airplane and the London bus. Off to the side is some giant ship equipment and a hangar filled with various experimental cars and the remains of a US B-24 bomber that was lost at sea off Antalya after a bombing run in World War II. It was found in the 1990s, and partially salvaged.
The museum itself is full of So. Much. Stuff. It starts with a sort of ode to technology, including a chronological exhibit of personal computers and a display of how ordinary household electronics work before moving on past another plane, a scale model of an oil drilling platform, and a row of cars to a replica olive oil factory, which lights up to show the olive oil pressing process. There’s some vintage Turkish safety signs nearby that are pretty cool, as well as row after row of bicycles, motorcycles, horse carriages, and prams. That’s less than half of one of the museum’s two buildings. Outside between the two buildings are a collection of giant anchors and ships’ bells, several ships, and a military submarine, which is open for tours. Yeah, a submarine. Side note, for those of you following the Ergenekon intrigue, apparently a large cache of TNT was found in the Koc museum submarine last May. This was either forgotten when it was decommissioned from the Turkish military or meant to be blown up in some horrifying scheme. As far as I know, the TNT’s been removed now.
The second building houses smaller boats, including a pretty sweet old car that could be driven into the water and turn into a boat. There’s also a bunch of motors, other mechanical things, and probably the most random exhibit of all: the yacht trip.
In addition to loving all things mechanical and being a scion of industry, Rahmi Koc is a bit of a yachting enthusiast. So, as one does when one has a lot of free time, a yacht, and a museum, he and his wife took a two-year, round-the-world trip in their yacht. Along the way they stopped by Africa, the South Pacific, the Caribbean, and pretty much anywhere that looked nifty. They took photos, bought a lot of souvenirs and knickknacks, and added to Koc’s t-shirt collection. When they got back, they put all those souvenirs and t-shirts in the museum. Imagine creating a museum exhibit out of your most epic trip. That’s basically what Koc did. It’s a little bizarre, but very fun.
I have no space to go through everything at the Koc Museum, and you’d get terribly bored if I did, so I’ll link the museum’s website below, but the one last thing: it has a small private train, which does short trips down and back the Golden Horn. Also, it has a Golden Horn-side bar.
The Koc Museum is an off-kilter, hands-on, and incredibly fun place to explore. With the sheer amount and variety of things on display, there’s guaranteedly something for everyone. And fun photo ops abound, because there’s so much you can clamber on/in/around. Once you’ve seen the sights of Sultanahmet, I highly recommend the Koc Museum.

Related

3 Responses to “This is my Istanbul: Koc Museum”

You should most definitely check it out next time you’re in town! It’s basically a giant playground, with lots of mechanical things. Have you been to the Ankara branch? I didn’t know of it til I moved here